Affirmative Action

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Wikipedia provides this definition at the beginning of its article on affirmative action:

"Affirmative action (U.S. English), or positive discrimination (British English), is a policy or a program providing access to systems for people of a minority group who have traditionally been discriminated against, with the aim of creating a more egalitarian society. This consists of access to education, employment, health care, or social welfare. In employment, affirmative action may also be known as employment equity or preferential hiring. In this context affirmative action requires that institutions increase hiring and promotion of candidates of mandated groups. There is much debate concerning claims that the practice is itself racialist, that it fails to achieve its desired goal, and that it has unintended and undesirable effects."
(Read the article here.)

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As the above suggests, affirmative action represents an attempt on the part of society to a) reduce the effects of racial (or other forms) of prejudice by taking positive, concrete measures and/or b) compensate for the damage done in the past by racial or other forms of discrimination. It was thus part of the answer the US provided to the demands of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which aimed to eliminate racial discrimination as completely as possible from life in the US.

The earliest form of affirmative action, in the 1960s, was quotas: African-Americans represented (and still do) approximately 12% of the population at large, but in most colleges and businesses, which were typically owned and/or run by white people, African-Americans represented a tiny fraction of that number, sometimes 0%. In order for colleges and businesses to make sure that their recruitment practices did not put African-Americans at a disadvantage, enforcement agencies in the late 60s and early 70s required institutions, including certain businesses, to set aside 12% of available places (admission as students, jobs, etc.) for African-Americans, thus insuring that the college or business would be an accurate reflection, at least as far as proportions of the races in the population were concerned, of the population at large. This device was successful, insofar as it guaranteed the presence in college and workplace populations of significant numbers of African-Americans.

Affirmative action is very controversial, however, as the above-quoted Wikipedia article points out. Some opponents claim that affirmative action is degrading, and that it suggests that the people that benefit from it are unable to deal successfully with the challenges of life on their own. Others complain that places reserved for one race, ethnic or linguistic group, gender or whatever the criterion might be, automatically are denied to others, who might be as well or even better-qualified for them as those who benefit. Still others believe that taking race into consideration in recruiting is a violation of the principle of equality.

The debate over affirmative action has been going on, in various forms, since the first programs were instituted in the 1960s and 70s. The Supreme Court has handed down several decisions on the topic: in 1978, it ruled in the Bakke case that quotas were not a legitimate form of affirmative action, but that affirmative action itself could go on, as it pursued the permissible government goal of equality. Twenty-five years later, in 2003, the Court ruled that race could be used as one of various criteria in recruiting, though not the only one, or even the main one. I.e., the debate over affirmative action is still going on.


Université Jean-Moulin - Lyon 3
Faculté des Langues
Charles C. Hadley 2005-06
This page was last updated on jeudi 15 décembre 2005 at 8:08